REPOST: The iZation of Afghanistan

In light of the publishing of the war logs by Wikileaks, The New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, I am reposting this from December. It is hard to admit I have feelings of guilty pleasure about this. Easier to admit is that my heart aches for the people of Afghanistan and the brave members of our military who, again, have laid down their lives in a cause that exists only in the warped minds of our leaders.

Most days that summer, on our way to or from the town pool, we stopped in the library for an hour or so each day to read. We plopped down our swim wear, wrapped in towels, on chairs and tables and raced to the stacks, browsing for our individual interests. There was one book we read together that summer, and the librarian was far sighted enough to allow a group of seventh graders to do so: Dr. David Reuben’s Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). We boys were at the age of wanting to know everything about everything. It was 1969.

That was the year the Jets won Super Bowl III and The Beatles gave their last performance; when there was a summer of love in Bethel, NY and of hate orchestrated by Charles Manson in Los Angeles; the Mets became Amazin’ and John Lennon and Yoko Ono astonished us by staying in bed for a week; Chicago had four Days of Rage while the outrage from Mai Lai was first revealed. We first landed men on the moon in 1969, and it might have been the year AIDs first landed in the U.S.

That was some year, that 1969.

One more event: on November 3, 1969 President Richard Nixon announced the Nixon Doctrine, or the Vietnamization of our war on Vietnam. He also announced that by December 15, 1969, 60,000 men, including 20 percent of all America’s combat troops, would be withdrawn from Vietnam.

There was a catch. The war did not end until 1975, until after Nixon resigned, and more than a third of all Americans who died as a result of the war died after Nixon announced Vietnamization.

Today, President Obama is announcing another iZation of an American war, eight years after we entered Afghanistan in our decision to punish it for 9/11 and as we continue to ignore the failure of iZation in Iraq. Nixon pointed out that President Johnson had Americanized the war. What he failed to address in his policy was that the war in Vietnam already was, first last and always, a "Vietnamized" war. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all believed a country, especially one as small and “weak” as Vietnam, could not be viable without America. The excuse, then, was the communists. Now, Presidents Bush and Obama believe Afghanistan (will he include Pakistan?) cannot survive as a country without America. The excuse is terrorism. What excuse will the American President give to the next Richard Van De Geer?

“… I am somewhat fatalistic about believing that I shall never come to serious harm in the military ….” Air Force 2Lt. Richard Van De Geer spoke these words into a tape sent to his friend, who received it on May 15, 1975 (from Dear America, Letters Home From Vietnam, published by W.W. Norton and edited by Bernard Edelman). “I can envision a small cottage someplace, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends.”

Van De Geer was the last official American casualty of the war on Vietnam. He said his helicopter unit helped pull close to 2,000 people out of Vietnam.

President Obama has decided to add more lives to the list of useless dead America has compiled in dozens of wars. The simple truth is that Afghanistan will remain as it is and America will withdraw. Nothing we do between then and now will change those facts. No amount of soldiers or bombs dropping from drones will change Afghanistan. The Nixon, now Obama, Doctrine, can only deliver destruction and despair.

“I wish you peace, and I have a great deal of faith that the future has to be ours.”

“Adios, my friend.”

These are the last words Van De Geer spoke into the tape.

It is 40 years since President Nixon gave us details about his plan to end the war on Vietnam. President Obama should have heard those words by now. Given the announcement of his decision tonight, it is clear he cannot understand them. Nixon told future generations, and presidents, that if his Vietnamization policy fails, we aught to heed its critics.

“If it does succeed, what the critics say now won't matter. If it does not succeed, anything I say then won't matter,” said President Nixon on 11/3/1969.

I wanted to know everything about everything in the summer of 1969. Now, I would be happy to have wiped from my understanding these certainties: that whatever President Obama says tonight will not matter and that the Obama Doctrine will fail. For the sake of the people Obama will add to the path of destruction, I pray I am wrong and that I haven’t learned enough.